Description:
Key Words:
Bamboo architecture,Bending-active shell structure,Live Physics Simulation,Form Finding
Required Skills:
Advanced rhino, advanced grasshopper, beginner Kangaroo 2, beginner Karamba3D
Required Software:
Rhinoceros v.6 or 7, Kangaroo2.42, Karamba3d
Required Hardware:
PC/Laptop running Windows is preferred.
Maximum number of participating students:
15
Bamboo is the most ecologically sustainable construction material currently available. Certain species have tensile strength properties like steel, grow over a meter a day, and can be used in construction within 3 to 5 years, making bamboo one of the fastest biological carbon absorbing materials. By incorporation bamboo as structural material in high-performative applications, like light-weight bending-active shell structures, a wide variation of non-standard architectural spatial designs becomes possible.
However, bamboo is a notoriously difficult material to incorporate in modern modes of construction due to the large natural dimensional and structural performance variations found within and in between individual culms. Typically, no building codes exist for bamboo applications in construction nor for structural performance calculation of its use in a non-processed natural form. As the material doesn’t succumb well to the material control and predictability typically found in and expected from contemporary construction materials, like steel, concrete, and even wood, current modes of architecture implementation struggle to benefit from its inclusion. Incorporating digital design technologies, like real-time physics performance simulation engines in the design process, can help overcome these material challenges.
Since the late 2000s, several design software programmes have incorporated real-time physics simulation engines, giving non-specialist architects design access to material behaviour simulations, expanding their applicability to early-stage architectural design. The parametric nature of these simulation engines enables the development of fully controllable building data environments that incorporate implementation communication.
This hands-on workshop will introduce students to specific digital design methods and techniques for the development of bamboo shell structures. Covered workflows will apply real-time physics simulation (add-on software Kangaroo 2®) and structural performance analysis (add-on software KARAMBA 3D®) within the 3D modeller McNeel Rhinoceros ® and its algorithmic modelling plugin Grasshopper®.